From my feedback after Sunday's chat session with Sprint customer care:

[azurelunatic]

I apparently cannot activate a non-Sprint handset, which I think is a bad idea and a sign that the US phone system is worse than that of developing nations and altogether an ideological crock; tomorrow I will find out whether my very expensive smartphone is in fact bricked and proceed from there.

I will not be calling customer care because right now I don't have a goddamn phone. Well, technically I have a prepaid phone that I just now bought, but I'm saving those minutes for emergencies. You can improve by changing US cellphone stuff such that SIM cards are easily swappable regardless of hardware's original network.

Comments

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith]

That's probably a design feature, not a bug: a deliberate ploy to undercut the usefulness of the product by trapping customers with a specific provider.

Re: Well...

[azurelunatic]

Very likely. But they said for me to tell them what would improve matters for me and resolve my issues...

I feel that this is one of the things where the hammer of regulatory powers needs to come cracking down.

Re: Well...

[silveradept]

Agreed. The practice of trapping people into long contacts and giving them handsets that aren't compatible with any other carrier has to garner a hairy eye from a regulator somewhere.

[wibbble]

Are Sprint the CDMA network? I know there's at least one network in the US that isn't GSM, and so doesn't need to use standard SIM cards.

For what it's worth, I had no problems shoving a T-Mobile SIM into my (unlocked) UK iPhone. GSM providers can't pick and choose handsets, I think it's against the GSM rules.

The US's real problem is a lack of competition, if you have a CDMA handset you're stuck with a CDMA provider, and if you have a GSM handset you're stuck with a GSM provider. There's a handful of GSM providers now, but building out infrastructure to cover the whole USA is expensive and time-consuming.

Meanwhile, in the UK, SIM cards literally litter my desk. I need to put them in the rubbish!

[azurelunatic]

Sprint is CDMA. TracFone, which is the handset I got, does both, allegedly, as it uses other providers' networks.

[geekosaur]

Actually, which one it does likely depends on the exact phone; TracFone resells from multiple providers, and being able to do both GSM and CDMA is usually a high end phone feature. If the phone is CDMA then TracFone will provision it via Sprint or Verizon (depending on where they got the SIM from; as already mentioned, unlike GSM there is no compatibility to speak of between different CDMA networks' SIMs), as those are the major CDMA providers; everyone else is GSM. (AT&T used to be TDMA but I think they shut off that network several years ago. Sprint also has a legacy iDEN network which isn't relevant to anything but old Nextel phones.)

[synecdochic]

Verizon's CMDA too, yeah.

[chagrined]

eta: nm, duh self, I keep forgetting I have a laptop now so I can check these things on that too.

yup. my desktop has a virus/malware/something. awesome.

[azurelunatic]

Oh, alas. :(

[chagrined]

well it seems to be gone now! it was nothing super nasty, maybe not even really a virus, some kind of adware thing. some program I installed must've had it attached. bummer. >:(

[torrilin]

AT&T and T Mobile are GSM. Most small providers are CDMA like Verizon and Sprint, tho some might use handsets that do both (not sure if Tracfone does or not...). AT&T prepaid phones are GSM, same as regular AT&T.

Since I think the US system is crazy, I try not to provide money to phone companies that have confusing terms of service or CDMA cell towers.

Re: Well...

[siderea]

tho some might use handsets that do both (not sure if Tracfone does or not...)

Okay, I gather that Tracfone the company sells both CDMA and GSM phones, but that individual Tracfone phones are one or the other, not both.

My Tracfones have all been GSM (says the chick who spent a good chuck of this evening messing about with her new Tracfones.)